Frank Wiesenberg

Starting in 1996 with Roman crafts living history demonstrations, I co-founded the project "Römischer Vicus", presenting several demonstrations of a dozen craftsmen on the website www.roemischer-vicus.de and attending Roman living history events in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland.
Since 2008 my webproject www.glasrepliken.de illustrates the Roman glass making techniques employing the German translations of the research by Mark Taylor & David Hill (UK) including reports on their Roman glass furnace projects and the glass furnace Projects of the PAM Velzeke (Belgium) as well as my own researches concerning glass.
In 2011 I had the chance to start the "IRM Internationale Reenactmentmesse - International Re-enactment Market"-project in/for the Archaeological Park Roman Villa Borg (Archäologiepark Römische Villa Borg, Germany, www.reenactmentmesse.com). This new annual event serves as a platform for traders and craftsmen to present their goods and new researches on historic topics to re-enactors, living history interpreters and museum's staff.
Starting studying Archaeology of the Roman Provinces (Provinzialrömische Archäologie) at the Cologne University (Universität zu Köln) in 2011, I did my Bachelor's thesis 2014 on the reconstruction of a Roman glass furnace at the Archaeological Park Roman Villa Borg. Since 2014, I conduct the annual glass workshops "Borg Furnace Project" in this hot glass workshop (www.glasofenexperiment.de). These projects also involve different German universities (Universität zu Köln, Universität des Saarlandes, Universität Trier), including courses which combine the theoretical and practical aspects of Roman vessel glass and glassmaking in general. The glass workshop also hosted two international glass conferences in 2015 and 2016.
My current research focuses on different furnace layouts for making glass vessels and smaller structures for making glass beads. One of the latter was built in summer 2016 at Calugareni Mures, Romania.
Future plans are the building of a larger workground at the Archaeological Park Roman Villa Borg for experimental archaeology in the materials glass, ceramics and metals, which is scheduled for 2017/2018. This workground will also be used equally for research and university teaching.